Dysmal

[ QUOTE ]
Great list. Posting to add to favoretes.

[/ QUOTE ]

You dont have to post to add to favourites. Just click the Favourite thread link at the bottom of the page. It will add the thread to the list of favourite threads under "My Home"

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I was better- but I seriously learned and went after my optimal drops. As Icy, that was Freakshow. Sweet, Tech-dropping Freakshows.

It wasn't everything I needed, but it sure did wonders for patching up Enhancements into that + or ++ range.

[/ QUOTE ]

Except that it seems (for example) that almost every magic-dropping enemy is resistant to dark attacks making fighting them with a Dark Melee scrapper or Dark Blast defender (especially) somewhat tedious compared to other enemy types.


[/ QUOTE ]

Well, for the CoT, after 30, the Spectral's dissapear(replaced by Behemoths), and they're the most common Dark resistant CoT mob. The 20s can be rough though, since BP are a nightmare for Dark resistance, and the CoT spectrals are annoying too. After level 30, I didnt find Dark resistance to be a big issue.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]


Unless of course we get some heavier resistances and/or an HP upgrade....


[/ QUOTE ]

Actually Jack did mention an HP upgrade.
(I'm the guy who actually asked the question so I payed REAL close attention to the answer

[/ QUOTE ]

Could you ellaborate please? Did he say an HP upgrade for Blasters is coming? An idea they're considering? or totally off-limits? Mentioning an HP upgrade could mean just about anything.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
To be honest, I really hope that he means "Along with some form of protection/defense/aggro reduction/ect".

[/ QUOTE ]

Me too. A little later in the lecture someone asked if there was any ideas to help blasters. Mr Emmert said something to the effect of I allready said some of my ideas to help blasters.

Honestly, I hope that they at least give blasters more hit points. Really, why not? They aren't mages in DnD after all.

[/ QUOTE ]

You are aware that blasters have the same HP as defenders and controllers right? Those ATs do fine with the same HP as blasters, because they have tools(control, debuffs, buffs, heals) to make their HP last a long time. Blasters lack those tools.

More HP aint the answer. More survivability is the answer. Desperation isnt going to do much for that, unless it lets you bypass the damage cap. Even then, its not going to be very useful, unless it comes with some sort of MoG type ability attached to it.

The link to Ladioss_Sopp's Dark Miasma guide is broken.

Here is the correct link Ladioss_Sopp's "Dark Miasma -- A Defender's Guide v1.0 "

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Statesman I applaud your efforts. I know you are crazy busy and I appreciate the fact that you will take a good hard look at blasters for the future.

[/ QUOTE ]

You do realize that everything States takes a good hard look at get's put on the nerf block, right? Be careful what you wish for.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, it would be more accurate to say that everything States takes a good hard look at gets nerfed, buffed, or left alone.

Tanker damage? Super reflexes? Martial arts? Katana? Dark Miasma?

[/ QUOTE ]

I dunno if States had anything to do with Dark Miasma changes actually, though I suppose as head honcho, he must approve all changes. THe only dev post we ever got on the matter was, I think, from Geko. Mostly, the devs said nothing, but have provided fix after fix for Dark Miasma, though it took months of us showing how bugged, broken, and poorly balanced parts of the set were.

I'd add defender blast end costs to the list of things the devs looked at and buffed.

[ QUOTE ]
[<snip>

/elec is actually probably the 3rd best blaster secondary, and I actually think most will agree with me. True you have to use elec primary to really take advantage, but /fire and /ice are seen as just generally bad, much more than /elec.

[/ QUOTE ]

I dont really see /Ice being seen as bad. In fact, its a very powerful secondary. The control abilities from Shiver(reduces mob attack rate, makes it hard for them to get close), Ice Patch(mobs on Ice Patch almost never get a shot at you) and Frozen Touch(Holds a boss in two applications) are very handy. They'd be much easier to use if the last two were ranged instead of melee though. Ice Sword is a nice melee attack as well. I can even see how the sleep would be good for a single target blaster, but since I'm AR, its useless.

Fire is really the only widely hated secondary.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I have seen many a broadcast asking for "Team needs a defender!"

[/ QUOTE ]

No you haven't. You may have seen, "Team looking for a healer", but that translates to "Controller/Defender who is Empathy primary".

[/ QUOTE ]


Listen to Erratic about this one. Or better yet go look in the Defender Forum. Search Key Words: "r u healer?" It suprised me too, but a lot of Defenders are recruited for a team zones-apart and then kicked off a team as soon as they make the trek to the zone the team lead is in and the Lead finds out their Primary, especially Team leads who are blasters or building the team for their Blaster friend.

REDICULOUS...how hard is it to righclick a Defender's name in the 'Find' box and pick the "chat" option and ask them "What's your Primary?" first before inviting them and then crucifying them for not taking Empath?

[/ QUOTE ]

R U Healer is exactly that. People hitting Defenders with the "evil tell" and Defenders getting offended by it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Its always been fun to confuse people who send those tells by saying "Are You?" I never did get a reply though.


Anyhow, since States sees blaster's role as ranged damage, it would be nice if the secondaries were reviewed so that they supported that role better. Most of our control powers(which support our ability to do damage) arent ranged, and therefore require Stealth to be useful. Thats not right.

Lets make the following the powers ranged.

Taser (Lots of real tasters are ranged.)
Ice Patch (PBAoE version may be fine for Tanks. Blasters, not so much)
Freezing Touch (35 levels for a melee ranged hold? Heck, Peacebringers get a melee hold at 18, and it happens to an amazing high damage attack)
Lightining Clap
Shocking Grasp (38 levels for a melee ranged hold?)
Stun (perhaps replace melee animation with the red blasts the Mek Men use)

There dont really seem to be any control powers in Fire Manipulation, but that set seems like it needs a complete re-write.

Now, while we're at it, lets add a +DEF toggle of some sort to all secondaries. Let the value be determined by the other attributes of the toggle, such as stealth or what not. If it grants stealth, the toggle should have a similar defense value(7.5%), since stealth powers cannot be used at the same time.

Dear States,

Personally, I think Ice Manipulation is a great secondary, with a couple of crappy powers, but I dont think its anyworse than Devices or Energy.

If changes are made to Blaster secondaries, such as adding new powers, please consider using the Kheldian model of power availability. What I mean is, Kheldians can unlock multiple powers from a primary or secondary set at the same time. As an example, Dawn Strike and Photon Seekers are both unlocked at level 32. If new powers are added to secondaries to add to Blaster survivability, I propose that none of the current powers be removed. Rather, just add more powers to the set that unlock at the same level as current powers. The code must already be there for this.

[ QUOTE ]
Well there is a Defenders channel, but it really hasn't had much vocal traffic on it. Not sure if that's a function of defenders being busy or quiet by nature

[/ QUOTE ]

First I've heard of the channel. Did it get posted on the Defender board?

[ QUOTE ]
AnswerTron's Guide to AR\Energy

Introduction: Why AR\Energy?

One day, I was sitting around, playing my Fire\Dev toon, and I had just thrown my third or fourth smoke grenade trying to make it stick on a group so I could hop in and set down a trip mine, when it occured to me that this was so boring it made me want to poke my eyes out.

[/ QUOTE ]

That is exactly the same way I feel about my fire/dev blaster. I went AR, but went for Ice instead of energy, for concept reasons.

I have to say I pretty much agree with all your AR reccomendations. Ignite may be useful for an AR/Eng, but only if they team with someone able to keep mobs in the Ignite patch regularly (controller, tanker, a defender with Dark Blast-Tentacles. For /Ice Ice Patch does this, but for other secondaries, they have to rely on team-mates.

RE: Howling Twilight

Please note that since it is now a full rez, you can no longer add Heal or End Recovery enhancements to HT. Any ones you have slotted you might as well replace, since they arent doing anything now.

Well, no, in part because its an immobolize and not a hold.

Black Stormer, human form Kheldians have an innate -30% damage resistance penalty to all damage types.

Basically every Def except Kin and Emp can herd, if they choose to do so. Toggle Debuffs (Darkest Night, Snow Storm, the Rad toggels), and I suppose FF could do it with PFF up.

With Shadowfall and Dark Embrace I can get at least 50% resist to everything except Fire/Cold. Defenders can herd with toggle debuffs. Its not particularly hard.

I dont disagree that Kheldian have good inherrant resists.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
on a full team, have a combination of defense and ranged offense that's second to none

[/ QUOTE ]

Umm, isn't that supposed to be a defender's role?

[/ QUOTE ]

Defenders have terrible defense and lower range offense than a Blaster. So no.

[/ QUOTE ]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! Thats frigging comedy gold right there. 3/5 Defender primaries have awesome defense. The AT name kind of gives it away.

That role would a whole lot easier with the proposed changes you mentioned a while ago States, any update on whether those will be here before Iss 4?

1) ability to promote/demote while a player is offline
2) alliances/globalchat
3) ability to change color/symbol
4) make all symbols available for SG creation (currently the Maple Leaf is not available)
5) Special missions for SG.
6) The fabled SG vault for enhancments that was talked about back in the mists of late beta.

[ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
Also, the defender secondary sets Dark Blast and Psychic Blast get their 'Snipe' attacks in the 3RD SLOT! And both are EXTREME! [censored]?!

[/ QUOTE ]

Defenders also do 64.99% of Blaster Damage so again the EXTREME thing may be related to a it's specific archetype.


[/ QUOTE ]

It is. Last time I checked, I dont think my snipe on Dysmal, slotted with 5 damage SOs and one ACC cant even one shot an even minion. Trust me, blasters have nothing to fear from Defender snipes.

The qualatative damage descriptions are, AFAIK, in reference to each ATs specific damage level, not a scale that applies to all ATs.

Just a note, for regular missions, the difficulty slider does not seem to be able to increase the levlel of certain villain groups beyond their normal regular level cap. That is, it doesnt seem to be able to make Sky Raider or Banished Pantheon missions spawn anything higher than 29, since that is their max level. I imagine the same results will occur with Tsoo, who cap at 29, and with Clockwork (cap at 18-20 aprox?)

Well, you listened to your customers. Good plan.

I like the ability to drop a mission. One question though, if a mission is dropped, will you be able to pick it up again from the contact? I imagine this system is some time in the future, so I hope that you take that kind of thing into account when designing it.

Well, I'm glad that you are meeting to discuss the changes States, I think its only reasonable to do so. After all, responding to and considering customer concerns is good business.

I think increasing boss HP and Damage is not the way to make the game more difficult in the 25+ range. Its an easy way to do it, but not the right way IMO. I think adding more buff and debuff abilities to bosses and other mobs in that range makes more sense, and would serve to make the game more difficult.

I've been thinking about the 25+ range, and it occurs to me, that 25 is exactly when most of my toons start to feel like heroes, and its because thats when you can get Stamina fully slotted and start getting SOs. The only problem with balancing the game for Stamina and SOs is it penalizes those who dont go for the cookie-cutter tweaked builds. Making fitness inherrent might work around that though.

[ QUOTE ]
This all kind of reminds me of when there was the problem with mobs in missions going from +1 to -5 levels below the hero! (Ie., the frontloaded mission problem part II)

At that time, Statesman, said, "No the maximum level range in a mission is 2 levels, or +1 to -1, based on the player with the mission."
That statement was correct as far as he knew it to be but in fact it was not.
That was not his fault. He told the designers: "Do it like this" and they said, "Ok, we did," but in fact they didn't. There was no way for him to know that...other than through the forthcoming 1,000,000 posts by us saying that we were getting gray bosses at the end of missions--what a different world we live in now, eh!

[/ QUOTE ]

Isnt Statesman the boss at Cryptic? Is it not his job to make sure that when he tells people to do something it actually gets done? It seems like hes not actually checking to make sure his directives are being followed, and thats sloppy managment. He's the lead designer, if he doesnt know the state of the game as it is on the live servers, either he or his employees arent doing their jobs right.

PI needs to have the threshold for creation of a second instance dropped significantly, and I think alot of the lag in Talos would drop if the devs would give us a ferry between Founders Falls and PI. Or heck, an undersea tunnel full of hydra or something. The FF-Talos-PI run in the 40s is just so annoying.

Also, Perez Park is empty since the Hollows came out. Lesson here is, unmapped (at least officialy) mazes full of badguys arent fun.